Abel v United States, 1960
DHS is still insisting that they can enter peoples' homes with only an "administrative" warrant. But they have not offered an example of a judicial opinion that allows this. We looked at an Eighth Circuit opinion two weeks ago. Abel v United States is a 1960 Supreme court opinion on immigrants and administrative warrants, but it also does not say the INS can enter homes without a judicial warrant.
"Abel" was a Soviet spy. His real name was apparently William Fischer, but the US didn't find that out until after his death in 1971; Fischer's use of the codename "Abel" was apparently a trick to get news of his arrest back to the Soviet Union because his name would appear in the papers. The FBI and INS went to his hotel room, with an administrative warrant. Most agents hid in an adjoining room while two FBI agents knocked on the door. "Abel" let them in voluntarily. The FBI agents tried to make a deal with "Abel", sort of a plea bargain, but didn't succeed. When that became clear, the INS agents entered the room, with the door wide open, and arrested "Abel" on the administrative warrant. The INS agents then searched the room, which police can generally do when they arrest someone. They found a birth certificate for "Martin Collins", one of "Abel"'s aliases.
While packing his suitcase, "Abel" tried hiding some papers in his jacket. This was seized; it turned out to be a coded message on graph paper.
After "Abel" was taken away, the FBI made a more thorough search of the room, with the consent of the hotel management. They found another birth certificate, for "Emil Goldfus", and a "one-time pad" for cryptography.
The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the coded message and the one-time pad could be introduced as evidence, given the absence of a judicial warrant. Their answer was yes.
The Supreme Court did not consider whether the administrative arrest warrant was valid, because that issue was not raised at trial. "Abel" effectively forfeited his right to challenge that. Nor did the Supreme Court consider whether entry into "Abel"'s room was legal with the administrative warrant, because "Abel" had opened the door and let the FBI agents in voluntarily.
In 1962, "Abel" was exchanged for U-2 pilot Gary Powers. This exchange was the basis for the film "Bridge of Spies".
In Spain, internet blocking in support of preventing the pirating of soccer video streams is getting out of hand.
https://reclaimthenet.org/laligas-anti-piracy-crackdown-triggers-widespread-internet-disruptions
LaLiga is the main soccer league in Spain, and they have been complaining bitterly about video piracy. Spain has now approved rapid-action IP-address-blocking rules. But according to reclaimthenet.org, the blocking process "flags entire IP ranges, many of which are shared by thousands of unrelated domains"
It is not clear if this applies to residential IP-address ranges; ie that your IP access would be blocked because your neighbor was streaming. But what is pretty clearly happening is that if one IP address owned by Cloudflare is streaming, it is blocked, but Cloudflare is likely offering up a number of other services (thousands, perhaps) from that same IP address. Amazon, Vercel and Github do the same. IP-address blocking, in other words, is a very crude tool.
A partial list of blocks is at hayahora.futbol/#estado.
The SOPA/PIPA laws proposed in the US also would have permitted IP-address blocking.
Here are some issues:
Laws
Cases
DMCA
Privacy
Why do we care?
Nothing to hide
Snowden and the NSA